Juliana Biography

Born Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina, April 30, 1909, in The Hague,
Netherlands; died of pneumonia, March 20, 2004, in Baarn, Netherlands.
Monarch. Princess Juliana of the Netherlands was an institution in her
country, a former queen as well as queen mother, royal princess, wife and
mother, and her death in March of 2004 was mourned by thousands in the
progressive Western European nation. Juliana and her family were among
Europe's prototypical "bicycle-riding" royals, whose
relatively modest lifestyles contrasted sharply with Britain's more
ceremonious House of Windsor.

Juliana inherited the throne through her bloodline. She was a descendant
of William I, founder of the House of Orange, who was assassinated in
1584. Her mother was Queen Wilhelmina, who came to the throne at the age
of ten; the country was governed by the Queen Dowager until
Wilhelmina's eighteenth birthday in 1898. Juliana was born in 1909,
Wilhelmina's only child with her husband, the former Duke of
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and grew up in the royal palaces in The Hague and
Apeldoorn. Her mother was a pious and earnest woman, and Juliana was
compelled to address her only as "Madame." She was said to
have been a lonely child, with few playmates, and grew into a shy, plainly
dressed young woman. Her mother did not allow her to wear makeup, even at
the age of 18, when she was installed in the Council of State as part of
her role as heir to the throne.

Juliana began to blossom when she entered Leiden University, from which
she graduated with a degree in international law in 1930. She twinned her
official royal duties with unofficial charity work, but she was also an
avid skier, and promptly entered a whirlwind romance with a dashing German
prince, Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, after the two met at the 1936
Winter Olympics in Bavaria. They were married in January of 1937, and
their first child, the Princess Beatrix, was born the following year. A
second daughter followed, but the couple was forced to flee with the two
children when the Netherlands was invaded by Nazi Germany in 1940. Juliana
settled in Canada, near a favorite cousin who was a member of the British
royal family, and produced a third daughter, Margriet, during the war
years. Later, Juliana sent an annual supply of famous Dutch tulips to
Ottawa as thanks for its wartime hospitality.

After the war, Juliana and her family returned home, and the hardships of
the postwar years were compounded by personal tragedy, when she contracted
German measles during her fourth pregnancy. Daughter Marijke (later known
as Princess Christina) was born nearly blind. A new era was ushered in a
year later, however, when her mother chose to abdicate and Juliana became
queen of the Netherlands on September 4, 1948.

Recalling her own lonely childhood, Juliana strove to provide her four
daughters with as normal a life as possible. Their family home, Soestdijk
Palace, was in the countryside near Baarn, and the girls attended local
schools. Juliana was known to buy her clothes off the rack, and could even
be spotted in the local supermarket at times. She also loved to ride her
bicycle, and the family was often seen in Baarn or on streets of The
Hague, like countless other Dutch citizens, doing just that. Along with
the modern, modest-living royal houses of Sweden and Norway, Juliana and
her family gave rise to the term "bicycle-riding" royals,
those whose lifestyles were a drastic departure from that of the
world's most famous monarch, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain, and her
brood.

Juliana's aversion to pomp translated into one of her first decrees
as queen, which abolished the curtsey rule at court. In 1949, she ended a
346-year legacy of colonial rule by severing Dutch authority over its
remaining colonies in the East Indies, including Java and Sumatra. Her
32-year reign was not scandal-free, however: early on, she reportedly grew
close to a psychic, who had promised to restore Princess
Christina's sight and then seemingly delivered on it, and the woman
had to be banished from the royal household in 1956. A more shameful
episode occurred 20 years later, when Prince Bernhard was implicated in a
bribery scandal involving kickbacks from the Lockheed Corporation, the
American aerospace firm. Bernhard allegedly used his influence with Dutch
military officials to help Lockheed land lucrative contracts, and he
narrowly avoided criminal prosecution for his transgressions. Aghast when
the scandal broke, Juliana offered to abdicate, but her daughter Beatrix
was unwilling to accede to the throne during a time of crisis. Instead,
Bernhard was instead stripped of his public offices.

Four years later, Juliana followed her mother's lead and abdicated
on her 71st birthday, in April of 1980. She and Prince Bernhard remained
active skiers well into the early 1990s, but her health declined and she
reportedly suffered from Alzheimer's disease in her final years.
She died of pneumonia on March 20, 2004, at the Soestdijk Palace; she was
94. She is survived by her four daughters and numerous grandchildren;
Prince Bernhard did, as well, but he died later that year. Thousands of
Dutch paid their respect to the plain, warm-hearted woman who once said
she would have been a social worker had she not become queen. Her coffin
lay in state at Noordeinde Palace in The Hague for a week, and then an
honor guard of 9,000 lined the route from the palace to Juliana's
final resting place, at a Delft cemetery next to William of Orange.